Being Calm Is Contagious—At Least for Roly Polies

For woodlice, also known as pill bugs or roly polies, serenity is contagious. The gregarious bugs congregate in large social groups, and when one roly poly is calm, it makes the others calm too, a pair of researchers from Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium report in PLOS Computational Biology.

The woodlice in question were caught in a university garden. The researchers put various groups of them in a circular enclosure at different times and watched how they interacted, and how fast they moved (a measurement of their anxiety or serenity).

The more time the excited woodlice spent together with calm woodlice, the calmer they became. The researchers hypothesize that being with other woodlice “may promote a collective entry into a behavioral quiescence or sleep-like state,” which might explain why groups of the bugs don’t always run away in dangerous conditions (for example, when exposed in the open) while individual pill bugs do. The larger their group, the slower the bugs were to respond to danger.

The researchers suggest that because of their social lifestyle, woodlice might be a good model for studying collective group behavior.

Giant squid have been the object of fascination for millennia; they may have even provided the origin for the legendary Nordic sea monsters known as the Kraken. But no one had captured them in their natural environment on video until 2012, when marine biologist and bioluminescence expert Edith Widder snagged the first-ever images off Japan's Ogasawara Islands [PDF]. Widder figured out that previous dives—which tended to bring down a ton of gear and bright lights—were scaring all the creatures away. (Slate compares it to "the equivalent of coming into a darkened theater and shining a spotlight at the audience.")

In this clip from BBC Earth Unplugged, Widder explains how the innovative camera-and-lure combo she devised, known as the Eye-in-the-Sea, finally accomplished the job by using red lights (which most deep-sea creatures can't see) and an electronic jellyfish (called the e-jelly) with a flashy light show just right to lure in predators like Architeuthis dux. "I've tried a bunch of different things over the years to try to be able to talk to the animals," Widder says in the video, "and with the e-jelly, I feel like I'm finally making some progress."

Once upon a time, Ireland was connected to a larger landmass. But that time was an ice age that kept the land far too chilly for cold-blooded reptiles. As the ice age ended around 10,000 years ago, glaciers melted, pouring even more cold water into the now-impassable expanse between Ireland and its neighbors.

Other animals, like wild boars, lynx, and brown bears, managed to make it across—as did a single reptile: the common lizard. Snakes, however, missed their chance.

The country’s serpent-free reputation has, somewhat perversely, turned snake ownership into a status symbol. There have been numerous reports of large pet snakes escaping or being released. As of yet, no species has managed to take hold in the wild—a small miracle in itself.